Consolidation
There are unfortunately just a few too many missing-person reports and almost-sanitized crime scenes to allow the Order to dismiss Consolidation as being a government-horror urban legend – or a garbled account of OV activities. Consolidation exists independently, and it represents an ongoing problem. The group must be shut down as quickly as possible.
Consolidation exists, simply put, to kill human beings with psychic abilities before they can be corrupted into becoming Esoterrorists. Their regular method is to detect – somehow – a target with budding psychic powers; once they have found one, a member of Consolidation will approach the target and offer to train the new psychic in his new abilities. The target is then brought into what appears to be an accepting and warm community of mystic explorers and visionaries, hiding out of sight from the mundane world ‘until the time is right.’
In reality, the target has joined (or sometimes started) a small group of other newfound psychics who are carefully encouraged to form relationships with each other, at the expense of their existing ones. This group differs from more traditional ‘cult-like’ behavior in that it does not attempt to raid the targets’ bank accounts or trigger radical personality changes; Consolidated merely wants its targets to keep quiet about their new, secret club. Typically, the ruse only has to last long enough for the group to get about ten members or so, which is when Consolidation takes them all out somewhere secluded and quietly murders them. Consolidation then uses its contacts inside various governments to obscure the nature of the mass murder, presumably to minimize damage to the membrane.
This is absolutely at odds with standard OV procedure. The mere possession of psychic power is not and should be not a death sentence; the people being killed are by definition innocent victims of mass murder; and the typical member of Consolidation could be accurately described as a sociopathic serial killer, with all of the negative connotations that that description implies. Investigators are ordered not to support Consolidation’s activities, to report members and their current projects to the Order when discovered, and to disrupt those projects whenever possible. This is not negotiable.
One last note: the Order is very familiar with the difficulties involved with carrying on a successful clandestine organization. Diligent investigation has not come up with any hard information about Consolidation’s operating structure beyond the fact that it exists inside various government organizations throughout the world. There is a strong possibility, then, that Consolidated is under the unwitting control of an Outer Dark Entity that is trying to limit the playing field for its own monstrous control. The potential irony here overwhelms.
(The following non-commercial, fan-created material is meant for use with the Esoterrorists RPG. The Esoterrorists is a Trademark of Pelgrane Press Ltd.)
I’m somehow tempted to run parallel Esoterrorists and Delta Green campaigns.
But the players would almost certainly recognize their own characters.
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(Besides, however cool bait-and-switch is as a concept, the co-operative storytelling nature of RPGs means it’s almost always a bad idea to try it.)
…There’s gotta be a ethical way to do it, though.
The obvious way, is for the players to know the twist and buy in.
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But that requires the right players, and takes most of the fun out of the concept.
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The best I’ve come up with, is running a pre-campaign to introduce the setting and letting the players know right up front that the prequel will necessarily have a tragic ending. That way, when they run across problems they caused, or their own corrupted characters, there’s a minimal sense of betrayal.
But that was also something more suited to frequent, marathon sessions. (Which I haven’t experienced in almost two decades.) It’s one thing to burn through the set-up in a couple of weekends. It’s quite another to let it build for 4-6 months.